Acclaimed Chiara String Quartet coming to Crete

Doane College proudly presents The Chiara String Quartet in concert 7 p.m. Nov. 12th in Heckman Auditorium at the School of Arts and Sciences in Crete.

The Chiara String Quartet - Rebecca Fischer and Hyeyung Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; Gregory Beaver, cello - has established itself as one of America’s most respected ensembles. Lauded by the Boston Globe for its "highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing," the Chiara is celebrating 14 seasons of playing together this year.

The Chiara has trained and taught at The Juilliard School of Music. Since 2005 they have been artists in residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and since 2008 have served as Harvard University's Blodgett Artists-in-Residence. Well-known for championing new music, including many pieces they have commissioned, the Chiara received a Grammy nomination in 2011 for its recording of Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartet No. 3.

At the same time, they are at home in the full range of string quartet literature. Notably, in 2009-2011 the Chiara performed a complete cycle of the 16 Beethoven quartets, and has more recently recorded the three Brahms quartets (from memory). The 2013-14 year finds them concentrating on the six string quartets of Béla Bartók, some of the most remarkable and important music of the 20th century, which they will perform in two-concert cycles at UNL, Drake University, Carleton College, Hastings College, The University of Iowa and Harvard University.

Their concert at Doane College features the even-numbered Bartók quartets, Nos. 2, 4, and 6.